3 Ways to Support Buying Local for the Holidays Using Social Media

If you have a business or just enjoy supporting your community by buying from local-owned businesses, you keep money in your community and help your neighbors feed their families. When you share that you bought local on social media, you let your friends know it is important to you, and it inspires them to do the same.

I invite you to join me and others in sharing more on social media that you are buying local. Now I don’t expect you to stop shopping at Target or never get another cup of coffee from Starbucks. But I do want to encourage you to make an extra effort to see if you can spend a few holiday dollars at a locally-owned business and share it online. For those who already do this, thank you!

Here are a few ideas for buying local for the holidays and sharing it via social media:

1) When at a local-owned business, please just make sure to check-in on Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp or Google Local, to name a few. When checking in on Foursquare you can post to Facebook and Twitter. I also add the hashtag #BuyLocal when checking in just to get it to stand out, and on Twitter it can then be searched.
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Here is a search link to see who is using the #BuyLocal hashtag from among the people that you are following right now on Twitter. Maybe you will be the first to use the #BuyLocal hashtag! https://twitter.com/search/timeline?q=%23BuyLocal&src=typd Also, here is the search link to see who is using the #BuyLocal hashtag on Pintrest:http://pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=%23buylocal

2) Post pictures on your social media page when shopping or eating out, highlighting specific things of interest while adding that it is a local-owned business and/or #BuyLocal to get the post to stand out. This could be on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest,

3) Appreciate businesses that have given you good service this year or, if you are a business, appreciate other business allies. Like a random act of kindness to a business, as Pat Howlett suggested, on-line. You can do this as an individual or as a business posting on their Facebook page. You can also just “mention them” on your own business page (or personal profile) and/or link to their business page.

On Twitter you may re-tweet a post of someone talking about buying local or someone at a local-owned business that you like. On Pinterest you can even have a “local-owned’ or “buy local’ board and pin pictures that support local businesses.

I know there are many other ideas –I would love to hear yours in the comment area below. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and thanks for all the caring you have done for others this year.

Examples of people encouraging people to Buy Local (this will be updated so post your below in the comments and I may add it here):